Islam OnlineStrongly Islamist, generally supports the government of Sudan. Know the other side..

Al-Ahram WeeklyFrom the editor: "providing as honest and objective a look at contemporary Egyptian and Arab reality as possible -- as seen through Egyptian and Arab eyes."

Sudan - News and Analysis by Eric ReevesBy far the best independent analysis of the developing situation--and usually much more pessimistic than official accounts. Also usually proves to be more accurate.

The Passion of the Present (the essay)

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In Darfur, a region in western Sudan approximately the size of Texas, over a million people are threatened with torture and death at the hands of marauding militia and a complicit government. Genocide evokes not only the moral, but also, the legal responsibility of the world community. Under international agreement, a nation must intervene to stop a genocide when it is officially acknowledged.

"Officially" is the key word here. So far, no nation in the international community has "officially" acknowledged the truth: Sudan is a bleeding ground of genocide. In this void, the Sudanese government continues to act with brutal impunity.

Thankfully, there are individuals working
in human rights organizations who are watching - and witnessing - and organizing, in support of the victims in Darfur. These individuals represent,
for all of us, a personal capacity to bear witness to the passion
of the present; one candle lit against the darkness.

However, before one can light a candle,
someone has to strike a match:
a donation to any of the human rights organizations active in Sudan, contacting your government representative, local newspaper, radio and t.v. station. Our individual activism is essential for the candlepower of witness to overcome and extinguish the firepower of genocide.

This world has long endured wars that take lives. Let us be part of one that saves them.

About: The Passion of the Present site is a totally non-profit labor of love and hope - in peace. Thanks for joining the effort.

About this blog

Our name comes from an essay entitled "The Passion of the Present" that one of our grassroots founders wrote and circulated by email in March of 2004. The blog started at the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School.

The editors are semi-anonymous in order to keep the focus on Sudan. This site is a resource for a blog-based information community now numbering several hundred interlinked bloggers and sites. Visitors come from around the world. Daily traffic ranges from just under a thousand visitors, to more than eight thousand on days when news attention peaks.

Our technology cost for a public blog service, with no special discount, is still just $13.46 per month! Start a blog if you don't have one already!

(Updated originally to note that I've since fixed a coding issue with some of the recent feed additions that did not affect the display of the feeds or the links to individual posts/items within them, but did affect links to the raw feeds themselves [from the orange RSS icons]; updated further to note that I missed at least one earlier [hopefully, they're all fixed now].)

On the minus side, the "Scotsman" site has just been relaunched, and most of its topic-based feeds (including that for Sudan) have been severed (although it looks like all the pieces are there for the feeds to be reinstated)--while Press TV has apparently abandoned its Africa feed. - EJM

On a somewhat-related note, because of new time constraints (largely tied in with an office move), I won't be able to post anywhere as much as I have been; however, I definitely will be able to update the batches of RSS feeds--and may add some others (concerning other countries) soon. - EJM

Gabriel and Katie-Jay will be heading back to the camps in January with a very special guest, Macy Gray! Macy and her musicians will be traveling to the camps [in order] to meet our wonderful friends, Leila and Fatma, and to hold concerts for them. Her music executive, Alicia Etheridge, with support from Djata Grant, will also be joining the team. We’re calling it Rhythm and Hope, and it’s all happening just a month for now.

Often times, when I see my fellow advocates trying to convince others about how serious the humanitarian crisis in Darfur is, they focus on the numbers - 400,000 dead, 2.5 million displaced, 4 million relying on aid to survive, etc., but to their bewilderment, the people [that] they speak to just don't care. I recently read an article about this, and I believe that it has important implications for the work we, as Darfur advocates, carry out.

In the journal Judgement and Decision Making, author Paul Slovic examines this phenomenon in an article entitled "Psychic Numbing and Genocide." It's about how numbers are ineffective at conveying the mass atrocities being committed in Darfur. While we know the value of one human life, we can't comprehend what that value would be multiplied by 400,000. We are, therefore, overwhelmed by the statistics. Studies [that] Slovic cites show that feelings become less intensive when the victim group goes from being even just one person to two.

This suggests that instead of discussing the enormity of the crisis, we must come up with ways to personalize it. We need to provide something more tangible than numbers alone. As advocates, we must realize that Darfur is not about numbers - it is about people.

For me, the story that captures the essence of Darfur is about a decision that most families have to make on an almost-daily basis: who to send to get supplies. Often, the eldest woman in the family is sent. This seems counter-intuitive, but actually makes sense upon closer examination. If the family sends a man, young or old, he is liable to be murdered. If a young woman is sent, she is liable to be raped. Thus, the oldest woman in the family is sent, as she is least likely to be killed, and least likely to be raped - but keep in mind [that] she is not immune to either. The comparison is merely relative. No family should ever have to make such a decision.

Next time you meet someone who doesn't know anything about Darfur, don't bombard them with statistics. Instead, I encourage you to share the above story with them. As well, below are links to two other fantastic tools that will help you tell the stories behind the statistics.

If you are to send one link to the uninformed, this is it. Nothing does a better job of putting a face on the genocide in Darfur. [The original only mentions this one, and omits the actual link. - EJM]

Yoni Levitan, Executive Director of STAND Canada, is a Law School [sic] in Toronto and graduated from Queen's University in 2007, after founding the STAND chapter at Queen's University in February 2006, one of STAND's most-active campuses. In the fall of 2006, recognizing the need to reach out to Canadian high-school students, Yoni founded and guided the STAND High School group's growth from only a handful of chapters to over thirty.

The government-sanctioned killings in Darfur continue unabated. More than 400,000 people have been slaughtered in the ethnic conflict in western Sudan under the Bashir regime. Now nearing the five-year mark, with no end in sight, the genocide continues, and the toll rises by 10,000 deaths each month.

Still, there are beginning to be small glimmers of hope, a recent panel organized by Canadian Jewish Congress, Quebec region (CJC-Q) said.

Last week, Liberal[-party] human-rights critic Irwin Cotler was to table in Parliament a petition with 300 signatures. It called on Stephen Harper’s government to intervene more diplomatically, and to impose a series of sanctions – from seizures to boycotts to divestment – if the Sudanese government continues to flout international demands to desist from the slaughter and adhere to ceasefire agreements.

Still, the feeling of despair is difficult to shed was the message conveyed by the panel, which was part of last month’s Holocaust Education Series.

Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz, who has been at the forefront in advocating on behalf of the people of Darfur, stressed that the Jewish community, with its Holocaust legacy, bears a “particular obligation” to ensure that “never again” means just that.

“I am here as a rabbi and a Jew, but mainly as a human being,” Rabbi Steinmetz said, lamenting the fact that the audience was filled mostly with faces [that] he already recognized as being familiar with the issue.

“It’s the usual suspects in the room,” he said. “That’s a tragedy,” and an apparent indication that the Darfur issue still does not rate high on the Jewish community’s radar.

Rabbi Reuben Poupko said [that] the phrase “never again” is a reflection of a certain “hubris” that existed before the slaughter in Rwanda and Darfur, among others. “Now we say it with a sort of ironic resignation,” he said.

The heart of the evening was reserved for figures who had witnessed such horrors and [...] returned to tell the tale.

Jean-Paul Nyilinkwaya, a founder of PAGE Rwanda, a Montreal-based group that advocates for and helps friends and relatives of genocide victims, said [that] there is little to be learned from Rwanda that would help Darfur. His father and many relatives died in Rwanda.

The common denominator, though, is “the fundamental indifference of the world community,” he said.

In Rwanda, using the term “genocide” used to be taboo. But even though it no longer is, “using [the term] now is not compelling anyone to do anything.

“The only positive thing is that we are here tonight. The optimist in me is always looking for signs of hope. I’m not ready to give up on humanity yet. International justice can serve as a deterrent.”

Justin Laku, of the Canadian Friends of Sudan, said [that] he is returning to Sudan in mid-December to monitor the situation. He praised Cotler – “my mentor” – and referred to the unimaginable levels of torture and rape occurring on a daily basis, noting the “silent genocide” that took place in the Nuba region of Sudan a decade ago.

Laku was in Baghdad in 2004-05 and recalled Roméo Dallaire’s explanation as to why we didn’t see western countries intervene in Rwanda.

“There’s no oil in Rwanda,” he said.

Dallaire presided over the ill-fated UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda in 1993-94.

John Weiss, a history professor at Cornell University, said [that] no actions have yet been effective in the Darfur crisis, in part because access to the area is made as difficult as possible. This “access control,” he said, allows the world to not be sensitized to the massacres, and to carry on with a confidant level of impunity. Even the United Nations “ignored warnings for a long time.”

The efforts to control access even includes physical intimidation, where visitors can be “shoved around and even thrown against a wall. It’s the instrumentation of chaos,” he said.

A newspaper essay written by Weiss and published the same day as the panel discussion discounted any positive role to be played by the UN by a “hybrid force” of 26,000 peacekeepers – called UNAMID – “wearing UN blue helmets but commanded by officers of the repeatedly discredited and Darfuri-detested African Union, an organization dominated by the Sudanese regime.

“The UN Security Council fell into a carefully laid trap when it passed Resolution 1769 authorizing the deployment of this bizarrely structured force.”

In the article and at the panel discussion, Weiss indicated that the best hope for salvation for the people of Darfur lies in restoring their control over their own destiny.

“It will take the willingness of outsiders to risk political and human assets [in order] to accomplish this shift,” Weiss wrote. “So far, not a single country has shown an interest in taking such a risk.”

On every seat in the room was a booklet prepared by Weiss called Darfur: The Final Solution. It listed a number of ways “to end the genocide,” including imposing sanctions, “close monitoring” of UNAMID and insisting that the Canadian government set up a joint Darfur-planning committee that could operate at arm’s length from the Foreign Ministry.

Speaking to reporters last week, Cotler noted that two Sudanese officials indicted by the International Criminal Court have yet to be handed over to the court to face justice.

One of them was Ahmed Haround, whose ironic title is Minister of Humanitarian Affairs.

In effect he is “being awarded for his criminality,” Cotler said. “A more-flagrant example of the culture of impunity would be hard to find.”